The Kitschifying of Music

Start early with music education if you want your child to excel in music.

"... Authenticity in full aesthetic masquerade. While mediocrity may be poor quality with no place to hide, kitsch is overt and exhibitionist; it is presumptuous, insincere and hypocritical mediocrity. It is blatant and strident pretension."

Harold Best, Dean of Wheaton College Conservatory of Music discusses what's wrong with pop culture, particularly as it relates to music, in his essay Musical Perception and Music Education. It's a bit long, but this wonderful, well-presented criticism of "pop culture" is certainly well worth the investment of a few minutes.

Read it here.

  • posted on 24 August 2006
  • by Jesse

InterAction:

28 August 20061. seriousandy:

I haven't read the article yet (and I do plan to), but it strikes me that the quote you posted above meets all the qualifications for kitsch.

Aesthetic masquerade, presumptuous, strident pretension...

28 August 20062. Jesse Gardner:

Not in it's full context. It sounds pretensious, but I snatched this from the middle of the article. Perhaps you could better explain why you think this sounds presumptuous?

YourThoughts?


(Minutia)

This entry was written by Jesse on Thursday, August 24, 2006 at 8:57 AM and appears in the Ears chapter. The previous article was entitled, "Pineapple Upside-down Me", and the next entry is called, "The Gospel According to Mozilla". Bookmark the permalink, save it to del.icio.us or Digg it.

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